Authors, Poets & Novelists Posters & Prints: “Cas...-Caw...-”
for literature & language arts classrooms, homeschoolers, and scholars.

Baldassare Castiglione
b. 12-6-1478; Italy
d. 2-2-1529; Spain (plague)

Baldassare Castiglione was the author of Il Cortegiano, the Book of the Courtier, 1639. Castiglione defined the ideal Renaissance gentleman as not only having the qualities of the Middle Ages chivalrous knight distinguished by prowess on the battlefield, but also educated in the classics. Castiglione was well known - Rembrandt, Titian and Raphael all painted his portrait.

Baldassare Castiglione quotes ~
• “Employ in everything a certain casualness which conceals art and creates the impression that what is done and said is accomplished without effort and without its being thought about. It is from this, in my opinion, that grace largely derives. [Sprezzatura “unstudied nonchalance”]”
• “Outward beauty is a true sign of inner goodness. This loveliness, indeed, is impressed upon the body in varying degrees as a token by which the soul can be recognized for what it is, just as with trees the beauty of the blossom testifies to the goodness of the fruit.”

Willa Cather
b. 12-7-1873; Virginia
d. 4-24-1947

“Cautiously I slipped from under the buffalo hide, got up on my knees and peered over the side of the wagon. There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields, If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.” My Antonia

• more Willa Cather posters
• more History Through Literature Posters

Margaret Cavendish (née Lucas), Duchess of Newcastle
b. 1623; England
d. 12-15-1673

Margaret Cavendish, an attendant of Queen Henrietta Maria, was a poet, philosopher, writer of romances (her romance, The Blazing World, is one of the earliest examples of science fiction), essayist, and playwright who published under her own name at a time when most women writers published anonymously. She addressed topics ranging from “gender, power, manners, scientific method, and animal protection”.

Margaret Cavendish quotes -
• “Marriage is the grave or tomb of wit.”
• “Indeed, I was so afraid to dishonour my friends and family by my indiscreet actions, that I rather chose to be accounted a fool, than to be thought rude or wanton.”

• Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader